


strawberries and cigarettes

by meredithhildebrand



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, boys falling in love, fragments of life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-03 18:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14002287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredithhildebrand/pseuds/meredithhildebrand
Summary: the thing that was so disappointing to me wasn't that Baz was a bad person. no, it was nothing like that.the thing that was so disappointing to me was that I couldn't help but fall in love with him.





	1. Chapter 1

**_SIMON_ **

 

  
i'm sitting in Baz's car, my hands clenched uncomfortably in loose fists. he's sitting beside me, his hands on the wheel, his pale skin looking like moonlight even though it's midday.  
the car is full of an awkward silence, and it makes me want to punch the dashboard. there's an underlying scent of cigarette smoke, and something sweet, but I can't decipher what it is. the sun shines down through the windowpane, warming my back and shoulders to a point of it almost being uncomfortable.  
i don't even know how i got here.

~~~

it all started when i was ten years old. my father and i had just moved here, to a small house at the end of a street. it was nice enough, but i didn't know that I would have to grow up next to someone like Baz.  
to say it was unbearable is an understatement. it was blacks, and blues, and greys, and browns. unpleasant. oh so unpleasant.

but the thing that was so disappointing to me wasn't that Baz was a bad person. no, it was nothing like that.

the thing that was so disappointing to me was that I couldn't help but fall in love with him. 


	2. Chapter 2

**_SIMON_ **

 

I never wanted to fall in love with him in the first place. I tried, and tried, and tried again to get rid of the feelings I had for him in a hundred different ways. Drowning them in any type of alcohol that I could find, punching my fists against the walls, running until my lungs were burning with pain and feeling like I was going to collapse on the pavement.

I didn't think that caring for someone that much could feel like it was suffocating me. 

I don't even know how it happened. But weeks went by, and weeks, and weeks. Before I knew it, I was 15, and the one thing that I couldn't stop thinking about was Baz. Just Baz. All of the time, constantly there, never wavering, never fading. 

He still doesn't know. Or at least, that's what I like to think. I don't spend time with him anymore, now that we're both almost 18. 

I was the one who decided to distance myself from him. It was getting too much for me. _He_ was getting to be too much for me. Sometimes, i would be so overwhelmed by the idea of him that I would stop everything I was doing and just start crying. It was pathetic. 

It's funny how the 16-year-old version of me thought that I was falling in love. Penny said I was just infatuated with him. 

" _You don't really like him, Simon. You're just in love with the idea of him. The romanticized version of him. You aren't missing out on anything."_

For a day, at most, I believed her. I wanted to believe her for longer, but that didn't happen. 

It was just physical infatuation. I didn't _really_ like him. Penny was right. Penny was _always_ right, no matter what the situation was. 

So you could imagine her frustration when I came complaining to her about how big of an asshole Baz was, even when he would just be walking down the corridor at school, not doing anything actually irritating.

"God, Simon. Do you like him or not?" she would say, obviously exasperated. 

 _Yes Penny, I do like him,_ I would think to myself. _I like him a hell of a lot more than I know how to handle._

But now, two years has passed. And Baz is still as unfamiliar to me as the day I met him.


	3. Chapter 3

SIMON

 

 

The first time I saw him, it was an overcast Monday morning. November. It was surprising, because even though I had already been in school for the past two months, I still hadn't seen him. I remember thinking that he looked like some sort of a character from one of the comic books I would take from the public library. 

Blacks, and whites, and greys. He looked like someone who lived a century ago, in the time of black and white. He was still three inches taller than me; the asshole always has been. 

Quick glances rapidly changed into one-way staring matches which transformed into dreams and thoughts of him and pure longing for the impossible. 

He kept me up at night. For months. I would stare up at my ceiling, concealed by the cloak of midnight, and tried to keep the secrets that I had inside of me, instead of letting them go.  

It probably sounds dramatic, but he destroyed me. He still _is_ , if I'm being completely honest. 

 

BAZ

 

Life was so much easier when I didn't live next to Simon Snow. 

I guess that the world likes fucking me over, because as soon as my eyes met his, I knew, deep down, that I was done for. 

He was all blue eyes and bronze curls and freckles and I knew, I fucking knew, that he would be the one who would cause all of my walls to crumble around me. 

_If sunshine could embody a human form, it would be him._

He looked like the sun. Golds and bronzes mixed together to create the most beautiful human being that I had ever seen. 

From the first moment my grey eyes met his ocean ones, I knew I was fucked. 

It was so easy. For me. Falling, stumbling, slipping; it was so _easy_ , I almost thought that I was too ahead of myself. That I was just delusional this whole time. 

I guess I was so stuck on the idea of him that the thought of getting over him wasn't worth it. I wish it was. I wish this whole thing was just a fluke, a misconception of reality, an illusion. 

But of course, it wasn't. And I've been too afraid to do anything about it because I think that the idea of him never knowing I actually feel is a cost that I'm willing to pay, if it means that I can stay suspended in reality for as long it takes. 


	4. Chapter 4

**_BAZ_ **

  
When I wake up in the morning, my head is pounding, and I instantly regret the bottle of tequila that I poured down my throat last night in an attempt to shut my mind off. Sometimes, alcohol helps. But it's never actually enough.  
The sheets are too warm against my body, so I push them aside, and my eyes stare up at the ceiling.  
My mind drifts back to Simon, and a bitter taste fills my mouth.

Simon. Simon Simon Simon Simon Simon _Simon_.

_He's more intoxicating than any alcohol ever could be._

He's like venom, coursing through my veins, getting closer and closer to my heart, and I know that once it does, it'll take a bigger toll on me than it should.

No one warns you that unrequited love is worse than not being accepted for how you feel. No one warns you that one-sided love can tear you apart more than a breakup.

_No one fucking warns anyone about anything._

I exhale heavily, and get out of bed. My head swerves to the side, and I grip the edge of the nightstand to steady my footing, and press a palm to my forehead in an attempt to subside the throbbing. My eyes close. For a moment, I try to stop everything.

Stop time, stop feeling, stop wanting, stop _everything_.

Just for a moment, I want to feel weightless. I want to feel untouchable, I want to be unable to feel these emotions that sometimes feel like I'm drowning in them, just for a _minute_.

I guess it's my fault. It's my fault for getting too attached to an idea that isn't at all plausible.

It's my fault. Most of the time, it is.

It's not intentional. At least I think it's not. Most of the time, everything I fuck up isn't meant to be ruined in the first place. 

But in the end, in some way or another, it seems that every time I touch something, it falls apart. 

 

**_SIMON_ **

 

My room is dark in the morning, and I can hear my parents fighting downstairs. They're always fighting. Sometimes about money, sometimes about me, sometimes about each other. 

They've fought for as long as I can remember. 

At first, it was only about little things. My dad not cleaning the dishes, my mom not taking me to buy a new pair of shoes that I desperately needed, my teachers calling them and saying that I wasn't as smart as I should be, and that they might have to make me redo the same grade when I was eight. 

But as I grew up, the fighting got more frequent, the voices got louder, the air got colder. 

The parents I once knew weren't there anymore, and life wasn't the way that it should've been. 

I learned to block them out at a young age. Putting a pillow over my ears only took away some of the yelling, but when I was seven, I found out that locking myself in the basement closet was the best way. 

They both separately came to me when I was ten, and threatened that they were going to take me away, to a place where we could live without all of the problems and the darkness sneaking in. 

But the funny thing about darkness, is that it's magnetic. And once it finds its way in to anything, it doesn't want to leave. 

Figures. 


	5. Chapter 5

**_SIMON_ **

 

It takes more than it normally does for me to get out of bed, and I can't figure out the reason why. My head feels like it weighs the amount of a stone brick, and the world spins violently whenever I move my eyes. 

I turn over onto my side, and curl myself into a ball, pulling my hands inwards into my chest and tucking my head away. My eyes shut tightly, and I try to subside the throbbing so that I can actually get out of bed. 

My phone rings, jarring me. I reach my arm over, and pick it up, my eyes half-closed. I turn it on and my eyes sting, and I see that it's a notification from Penny. 

The time reads 11:00. 

Shit. Shit. I slept in; classes started two hours ago. 

Ignoring the steady pain in my head as best I can, I scramble out of bed and pull on the first clothes I see, and run downstairs. I'm praying that my parents don't notice me being late; the worst thing I could do is to grab their attention. Most of the time, I don't. They barely notice me at this point. 

I slip out of the back door, my shoes sliding uncomfortably on the damp grass before I can regain my footing. It's drizzling outside, and I can hear my footsteps on the gravel pathway leading out into the street. 

I live five blocks from school, and if I run, I can be there in ten minutes. I can feel the lactic acid beginning to pierce it's way through my side, and I try not to focus on it, and exhale heavily.

I normally don't oversleep, and most of the time, I'm up at dawn. Penny always gets upset with me when she finds out that I do so, because she doesn't understand how anyone could wake up so early. She finds it unfathomable. It's funny, coming from someone like her. She always seems to be one step ahead of everyone, no matter the situation. It's one of the things that I admire most about her, even though I keep it to myself. Penny knows though, she always does. You don't even have to tell her anything. 

It's unnerving, being close friends with a person like her. You never know when they're going to figure out something about you that you don't want to be found out in the first place. She's unavoidable; you can't keep secrets from her. 

I learned that the hard way. 

 

_**BAZ** _

 

It's strange not seeing Snow in first period. 

It's strange not seeing him flit his eyes across the room, it's strange not seeing him whisper over something to his friend Penelope, it's strange not hearing his sigh when I normally walk past his desk, and him thinking that I don't hear it. 

But I do. Every time, I do. I just never say anything.

He doesn't notice me making notes of every single little thing he does. But I do. The way he runs his hand through his bronze curls, the way his slim fingers wrap around his pencil, the way he turns his head to look out the window, the way the sunlight catches on his skin, making him seem cloaked in radiance.

It's strange not seeing _him_. 

It's even stranger not seeing him in second period. His chair sits empty, in the far right-hand side of the room. 

There's something so strangely daunting about an empty chair. 

It makes me think that something happened to him, even though I know that's not logical. It never is.

My thoughts never _are_ logical when it comes to him. 

Love does that. Love clouds your brain, your mind. It makes you think that there's something out there that no one else but that person can give you, and it feels like an iron fist closing around my heart when I harshly realize that everything I love about him, I can't touch. 

He's the only person who I've let even moderately close to my heart, and yet he's still a world away. 

_He's too far away. He's too far away. He's too far away._

He's out of my grasp, and there isn't anything in my power that I can do about it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't even know if joint headaches can exist, but i'm just gonna leave it.


	6. Chapter 6

**_SIMON_ **

 

By the time I get to school, my lungs are burning, and I pretend to not notice Baz's dark eyes staring me down when I hesitantly walk through the door of my second period classroom. 

The class ceases all conversation, and the majority of the eyes in the room come to rest on me, and my face begins to grow awkwardly warm. 

Shit. This is why I hate being late to class.

The teacher, Mr. Spaulding, gives me a cool onceover, and nods to me, signaling for me to sit down at my desk. 

Even though the class has returned to listening to the teacher, I can still feel someone's eyes on me. 

Baz's bore into mine, and my stomach clenches, and I can't help but stop walking. There's something about Baz's iron stare that makes me feel like it's pinning me to the wall, and I hate myself for it. 

I fucking hate _him_ for it. 

I clench my jaw, as Baz and I lock eyes for what seems like minutes, even though I know it's only seconds. 

 _I wish it was longer._  

I swallow, and jerk my eyes uncomfortably away before finally sitting down, and slide my backpack off my shoulders. I pretend to not feel his eyes on my back, but I have a strange, consuming feeling that they are. 

He's always messing with me. I know he thinks that I'm oblivious to everything he does, and I wish I was, but I'm not. 

He's the only thing that I'm actually painfully aware of, all the time. Constantly. 

I'm aware of him, of his presence, of his energy, all the damn time.

It's infuriating. So completely irritating. 

 

**_BAZ_ **

 

Simon must think that the reason why I'm staring him down is because I'm plotting something. But that isn't true.

The reason why I stared at him for an embarrassingly long time is because I still can't seem to fathom why he looks so fucking good, even though he was obviously sprinting to school.

He's a nightmare, a tragedy; the list goes on, and on, and on.  

His bronze curls were messed, and his sweater sleeves were rolled up, revealing his pale golden skin, speckled with spots.

 _I want to run my fingers over his skin, I want to feel his warmth, I want to wind my fingers through his curls, I want, I want, I want._  

I swallow uncomfortably, and return my focus to Mr. Spaulding lecturing us on how to calculate mathematical limits. But my chest still feels heavy with frustration. 

It's because of him. Everything I feel, is because of _him_. 

I pay attention for as long as I can, but of fucking course, my eyes drift back to Simon, and I exhale heavily. He's resting the side of his face with the palm of his hand, and he's absentmindedly turning his pencil over with his fingers, and a ray of sunlight catches on his bronze curls, turning them a bright shade of gold. He looks too angelic for me to be able to function properly, and my mind is foggy with thoughts of what I would be doing to him right now if the classroom was empty. 

If it were just him and I. 

I shake my head. Fuck no. If I keep dreaming like this, if I keep hoping like this, if I keep holding on like this...

_It's going to kill me._

And I don't know if I'll try and stop it when it inevitably happens. 


	7. Chapter 7

_**SIMON** _

 

 

As I'm putting away my textbooks in my locker, Penny comes up to me, her hair red like fire. She dyed it three months ago; she said that she needed a change, something different. 

Maybe I should do that. She's obviously happier with a different hair colour, and it shows. 

But right now, it sure as hell isn't. Her brown eyes are dark with fury, and I already know she's going to say something about Baz. 

I can't handle it right now. I wish I could, but I'm exhausted, and I think I have a headache starting to form. I don't have the energy to sit through one of her mature, responsible, sensible lectures about how I don't need Baz, how he isn't the one, how he doesn't deserve someone like me, how he isn't good enough for someone like me. 

She's wrong. I do need him, and sometimes, it scares me. I sometimes think that I need him so much that I get panicky when I realize that I might end up graduating without even feeling his hands on my skin. It's a stupid thing to do, but sometimes, all I do are stupid things. 

Penny raises an eyebrow at me when I finally decide to turn my head towards hers, and I exhale. I hate this look on her. She's the type of person who could turn you into dust if she really wanted to, and all with a momentary glance. Sometimes, it makes me jealous of her, because I envy her ability to be so fucking confident all the time. 

Sometimes, it feels like I'm living in the shadow of her, and it's a shitty realization that I succumb to every day. 

Her eyes soften, and she puts her hand on my arm, and I attempt at a smile. The quiet surrounds like us like air, and it feels almost palpable, like if I really wanted to, I could reach out and grab a handful of it and crush it beneath my fingertips. 

"Simon," she says, softly, and I close my locker and lean my weight against it, feeling the cool metal beneath my sweater. 

"I know, Penny. Okay? I get it. You're going to tell me that I don't need him or some other shit like that," I say, and Penny almost looks taken aback. She scoffs, and rolls her eyes. 

"Okay, Simon. Whatever you say," she replies, and turns on her heel before walking away. 

Once she's gone, I turn back towards my locker, and I battle the urge to punch the wall.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry that this shit chapter is so short, but the next one will definitely be longer. i just wanted a short kind of segue into the next part, so that's why barely anything happens in this chapter.


	8. Chapter 8

**_BAZ_ **

 

The image of Simon replays in my mind, and my skin burns. His bronze curls were between my fingertips, they were wrapped around my fingers, _he was underneath my hands. He was there. He was there. He was-_

_There._

He's always there, in some way or another. And I can't get rid of him, no matter how fucking hard I try. He's an insufferable, incorrigible, negligent stain that just doesn't know how to erase itself.

The first time I saw him, it was like staring into the sun. He was all bright edges and shining corners, and I knew, almost immediately, that no matter how many stars I wished on or how many times I secretly crossed my fingers when I thought that no one was watching, that he would never be mine.

He's like a glitch. Fading in and out of view, coming in out and out of focus, blurring, disappearing, changing.

_Permanent. He's permanent._

  
**_SIMON_ **

 

I don't see Baz for the rest of the day. I don't see him as I walk home, I don't see him during lunch hour, I don't see him talking with his friends.

It's strange, and I fucking hate myself for having such a stupid infatuation with him. It's never gotten me anywhere. I've never been chained to such an inconvenience in my life, and there's nothing more than I want than for it to go away.

But I know that if it was meant to die, it would be gone by now.

The first time I talked to him, it was almost like tasting colours. It was reds and greens, and purples, and I knew that he would be the reason why my edges would slowly fade away. 

But that was before. Before everything fell apart, before the unbearable silence, before the flesh and blood and reality of him just became a fuzzy memory that's fading faster than I care to acknowledge. 

I wonder if he ever still thinks of me. I wonder if he ever stops to think about what we had, as fragile and undeveloped as it was. 

I wonder if he wishes on the stars for me, just like I do, every night, for him.

But the harsh reality about wishes, is that that's all they are. Mindless images of what we want, but know we won't ever actually obtain. 

Wishes are useless, and a waste of time, and a disappointment.

But I would be lying to myself if I didn't rely on them to give me even the smallest sliver of feeble and thin hope, when it comes to Baz.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ugh i'm sorry that this chapter is so awful, but I'm really not having much inspiriation at this moment.


	9. Chapter 9

_**BAZ** _

__

Fiona calls me as I'm driving home from school, and I roll my eyes, as I decline the call. I have no desire to talk to her right now; my head hurts, and I haven't eaten anything all day. Fiona is all too good at draining the energy from anyone she talks to, especially me. I'm not completely positive, but I'm pretty sure that she takes out all of her anxiety and frustration on me, and most of the time, I deal with it, but I don't feel like doing so today. All I really want is to go home, get into my bed, and fall asleep until tomorrow morning  because I'm completely exhausted. 

It starts to rain when I'm half a mile away from my house, and I sigh. I hate driving in rain.   


It's how my mother died. She was driving with my father, and I was in the backseat, and a raging drunk decided to crash into us. My father and I both survived, miraculously. But my mother wasn't as fortunate.   


I can still remember my father's face in the hospital the next morning. I was only five; so I didn't understand what was really happening, but all I knew for sure, without hesitation, was that my mother was gone. I knew that I would never hear her sing to me again, I knew that I would never feel her touch, I knew that I would never see her smile. I knew that she was gone, and that she wasn't going to come back, no matter how many times I wished for her to somehow do so. 

  
Father looked like he didn't understand what the doctor was telling him; he looked right through him, right through me, and I wasn't sure that he was going to come back to reality. He didn't look like he was. But I knew that he was never going to be the same again, because he thought that my mother hung the moon. Strung the stars together, painted the sky, created the clouds. 

And once you lose someone like that, someone that you undeniably put above everyone else, you lose a part of yourself.   
  
That's how I remember seeing love. Love was this beautiful, ethereal thing, that was created between two people who saw the world in not exactly the same way, but similar enough to understand the other completely. It was falling, tripping, stumbling into this different world; it was like being given two new eyes that hadn't seen the world at all for the way it actually is. 

Love was being given a second chance. A do-over if you fucked up one too many times, another opportunity to make something right, another chance to trick the world into thinking that you deserved more than you actually did. 

Now, it's different. For me, love is a trap. It's being sliced open by a knife that you can't see or touch, but can feel vividly. It's being stabbed in the dark, and not knowing where you're going to be harmed next. It's unavoidable, unfamiliar, incomplete. 

Love is weakness. Love is giving someone the ability to break you in half, love is giving your heart away to someone else, love is selling your soul away to some sort of unnatural force that can rip everything away from you in a second, if you give it the chance. 

Love now, in my mind, isn't anything that it used to be.   
  
  
_**SIMON**_

__

When I open the door to my house after I get home, my father is sitting at the kitchen table, with a beer bottle in his hand. He's leaning back in his chair, his feet skimming the wood floor, back and forth, back and forth. My stomach drops.   
"Dad?' I say, carefully sliding my backpack off my shoulders and putting it into the closet. "Where's Mom?". I know he probably doesn't know, because when he's drinking, he turns into someone who's a million miles away. 

"Out," he replies, hoarsely, without looking at me. I lean against the kitchen counter, my fingers gripping the edge, and I swallow. My head nods, and I walk over to the cupboard to grab a cup. I fill it up with water slowly, looking over my shoulder at him, making sure that he isn't going to get another bottle.   


If he has one, he's okay. A little rude, but bearable if I don't pay too much attention to him. Two drinks, and it's a little harder for him to maintain himself without stumbling on his words. After three drinks, he gets weepy. Starts crying about how much of a jerk he is, how he wishes that he didn't treat my mother the way he does, how he wishes that he was a better man. How he wants to change, for me, for my mom. Four drinks, and he's giggly. Laughs too loud, and too much. Sways on his feet a little, and when my mother's around, he wraps his arms around her and kisses her forehead, holds her hands in his, and tells her that she's the only light in his life. That he can't imagine his life without her, that she's the reason why he's still here, that she's beautiful, wonderful, irreplaceable.

Four drinks, and he's a liar. I can tell because his eyes glaze over, and his voice is just a little too slurred for me to pretend that I don't know if he's drunk or not. If he's messing with me or not. If he's actually telling the truth, or just pretending to. If he's faking it. 

After six drinks, things change. He becomes angry. Rages through the house, head in his hands, throwing things if they aren't too heavy for him to grasp. Six drinks, and he's unrecognizable. It's now when I try to avoid him the most, because I know what would happen to me if I crossed him. On a good day, he'll just punch me a couple of times; either on my face, or my stomach. I would try and hide the bruises that would paint my skin because I knew that if the teachers saw them, they would ask questions. When i was younger, I knew that if I let a mark show, I would be sent away. Six drinks, and he's unpredictable. Unsteady. 

On a bad day, I wouldn't go to school. 

I'm still scared of him. Hell, I'm fucking terrified of him. I still lock myself in my bedroom when he drinks too much because I don't know what would happen if I got into the crossfire between him, and alcohol. My mother doesn't talk to me, or him, when he drinks one too many drinks, because I think that if she did, she wouldn't wake up the same. 

Every night, I try and do something about it. I try to confront him, I try to tell him that he isn't doing the right thing, that if he doesn't change, my mother and I are leaving, and aren't giving him the satisfaction of seeing us look back at him. 

But I guess that the ice-cold fist that wraps itself around my throat when I try to say something, has more power than I think it does, because nothing ever changes. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ahh i don't know what I'm getting myself into, but I've been listening to strawberries and cigarettes by troye sivan on repeat for the past 15 hours.


End file.
